The six-year-old girl arrived at a children’s hospital in Lubbock, Texas, with a severe fever and worsening breathing difficulties. Doctors placed her on a ventilator, inserting a thick tube into her airway so a machine could assist her breathing. They also administered intravenous fluids to combat dehydration and prescribed antibiotics to treat possible bacterial infections that may have developed during the weeks she spent at home with measles.
Her condition deteriorated rapidly. Within 24 hours of being placed on the ventilator, she went into shock, her blood pressure collapsed and her heart stopped. Resuscitation efforts failed. Her death left her family and the wider country grieving, marking the first US child to die from measles in a decade.
Soon afterward, however, anti-vaccine activists began arguing that the girl had died because of medical malpractice rather than measles. The claim reflects a strategy now emerging in Pennsylvania as that state confronts a growing outbreak. It has also been echoed by Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US secretary of health and human services and a longtime opponent of vaccines, as he publicly challenges the reported measles death toll.
The US has recorded eight measles deaths in fewer than two years, placing Kennedy at the center of an increasingly charged political controversy. The rising toll has intensified criticism of his long-standing, false claims about the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
The effort to redirect blame is producing consequences beyond the death count. Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization Kennedy once led, says it has helped prompt malpractice investigations into physicians who treated two unvaccinated girls who died during last year’s measles outbreak in west Texas. The outbreak sickened at least 762 people.
“At first they were going to throw out the complaints,” Brian Hooker, the group’s chief scientific officer, said in a recent video. He claimed that officials later decided to have their own medical expert review the records because “inappropriate antibiotics were prescribed”, which he said contributed to both deaths.
Paul Offit, an infectious diseases pediatrician and internationally recognized vaccine specialist, said the surge in measles cases and deaths creates an uncomfortable situation for Kennedy and other vaccine opponents. “So they’re trying to say, ‘Well, it wasn’t measles,’” Offit said.
Katherine Wells, director of Lubbock Public Health, described the response as a familiar tactic. “It’s their playbook,” she said, arguing that the claims are intended to undermine confidence in vaccines and raise questions about their safety. “The issue at hand is that we’re having these large measles outbreaks, and they’re not stopping.”
The danger extends well beyond fatalities, Wells said. Large outbreaks disrupt families, communities and daily life, while roughly one in five unvaccinated measles patients requires hospitalization. The virus can also erase immune protection against other diseases for years, leaving survivors vulnerable to serious infections. In later years, some may develop subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), a rare measles complication that is fatal and has no treatment.
Last year, Hooker went to Texas and interviewed the parents of the six-year-old, who told him they still would not have chosen to vaccinate their children. Not long afterward, an eight-year-old child died of measles at the same hospital.
Hooker requested the children’s medical records and shared them with Pierre Kory, a critical care physician without pediatric training. Kory lost his board certifications after promoting Covid misinformation, strongly advocating ivermectin as a Covid treatment and claiming that pesticides, rather than poliovirus, cause polio paralysis. Kory, who avoided legal liability in a malpractice case brought by the estate of a Covid patient who died after following his treatment plan, concluded that medical errors—not measles—were responsible for the children’s deaths.
Kory said the first girl had received “a completely inappropriate antibiotic” for a bacterial infection linked to measles. He argued that she “did not die of measles by any stretch of the imagination”, instead attributing her death to pneumonia and poor medical management. He made a similar claim about the second child, blaming her antibiotic treatment for what he called “medical malpractice”. Secondary bacterial infections are common among measles patients and can trigger a potentially fatal chain of complications.
In private, Kory reportedly suggested that the two Texas girls may have been infected with a weaponized form of measles.
Hooker and a colleague filed complaints with the Texas medical board, alleging that the children had received antibiotics improperly. In his video, Hooker said the board was examining the complaints. The Guardian and Important Context could not independently verify that account, and the doctors’ identities have not been made public.
Anyone may submit a complaint to a state medical board, which typically reviews allegations carefully. Several prominent anti-vaccine figures have themselves faced complaints over their professional conduct.
Wells defended the medical teams involved, saying both the physicians and hospitals “went above and beyond”. Hospital pediatricians care for some of the sickest children while working in demanding conditions for comparatively modest pay. Being accused of intentionally harming patients—or of failing to provide the best possible care—has been deeply painful, Wells said. The allegations from Children’s Health Defense and the possibility of medical board investigations, she added, are now “in the back of everybody’s minds”.
Hooker made his comments about the Texas complaints after two unvaccinated infants died of measles in Pennsylvania. He said he would put “boots on the ground” in the state to determine whether a hospital error had occurred and, if so, ensure it was not repeated.
Other vaccine opponents have reinforced the same narrative. Peter McCullough, a former cardiologist whose board certification was revoked by the American Board of Internal Medicine, wrote on X that the case of Pennsylvania’s third measles death—a 40-year-old unvaccinated woman—contained “no mention of antivirals, antibiotics, or steroids”. The county coroner, however, said the woman had been unable to obtain medical care before her condition sharply worsened, meaning she would not have received medication for the illness.
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Kennedy has suggested that Pennsylvania’s governor, Josh Shapiro, made up the measles deaths for political reasons. The message was echoed by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, who claimed in a Fox News interview that Shapiro was “playing this out over the airwaves for political purposes, just like what happened during Covid”, adding: “And this is why there’s such deep distrust in public health.”
Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a Fox Business interview: “We don’t know if the children died from measles or had another condition that was already attacking them and they happened to get measles at the same time.” The CDC has also called the deaths into question, only listing two of the five deaths this year in Pennsylvania. Officials in Pennsylvania have been clear that the deaths were because of measles.
Anti-vaxxers have long vilified and targeted physicians. In Texas, attorney general Ken Paxton has launched investigations into doctors who vaccinate children, alleging a conspiracy with drug companies. And CHD has funded numerous lawsuits against pediatricians over alleged side effects from vaccines. In January, the group launched a Rico suit against the American Academy of Pediatrics, which had sued Kennedy over changes to the vaccine schedule.
Despite no longer leading CHD, Kennedy still appears to enjoy close ties to the organization. At their Washington DC conference in September, he said they had “a friend in the White House”.
Advocates say the group appears to be running interference for Kennedy amid the ongoing resurgence of measles, which was previously declared eliminated in the US but has made a comeback with rising anti-vaccine sentiment. CHD and Kennedy have been top promoters of vaccine misinformation, according to a 2021 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Kennedy has been “a very successful anti-vaccine activist”, which has resulted in the largest outbreak of measles in three decades as well as the resurgence of other preventable illnesses, Offit said. “Now we have more children dying of flu and measles and whooping cough – and Haemophilus influenzae type B meningitis is now coming back.”
Anti-vaccine activists want to “distract, distract, distract” from the damage they have caused, Offit said. He believes the tactic will not be successful, pointing to pushback from leaders including Shapiro and from pediatricians. “I think pediatricians will continue to move forward as they have,” Offit said. When Kennedy attempted to slash vaccine recommendations in January, “pediatricians ignored him”, Offit said. “I think most people are ignoring him.”
The efforts to spread misinformation and mistrust about pediatricians may take a toll, especially on people who already doubt vaccines, Wells said. “It just further divides us. It sticks with the people who want to believe that narrative, and I think it adds to the doubt that they have.”
Yet when the outbreaks worsen, people who were previously vaccine-skeptical choose to get them, she said.
“During our outbreak, all the parents that were hesitant came forward as soon as they heard there were cases,” Wells said, “and they got their kids vaccinated.”
This article was written in partnership with Important Context
